Cities and agencies across San Luis Obispo County are moving forward with a plan to bring more affordable housing to the region.
All seven cities in SLO County are working together to identify barriers that stand in the way of building new housing, such as infrastructure.
whether you’re renting or buying, it is still very expensive to live in San Luis Obispo County.
“Each community is planning for housing. We’re seeing it developed over time and yet our region is still struggling to produce what it really needs and on top of that, produce housing that’s affordable to local residents and the workforce,” said Koble Collaborative CEO Carolyn Berg, who is involved in the regional plan.
Finding strength in numbers could be the key to making SLO County a more affordable place to live.
“Local government can’t fix this problem all by themselves so that’s why we came together to look at it on a regional scale,” said SLOCOG Transportation Planner Sara Sanders.
The regional housing and transportation plan is a collaborative effort between the county, cities and developers.
“It’s not necessarily a superhero answer coming out of this plan, but it’s one step in the right direction,” explained Berg.
The first step is identifying exactly what is holding back new development.
That can be a lack of water or not enough infrastructure such as roads and highways.
“This is the first plan of its kind,” said Sanders. “We looked around. We thought it would be ‘Oh, I’m sure other people are doing this—connecting infrastructure barriers to housing,’ and no one’s really done this. So, we’re all kind of in this together.”
Another key aspect of the plan is gathering data on how expensive it is to live on the Central Coast.
“The population of our cities and our county is really quite small,” said San Luis Obispo Mayor Erica Stewart. “So, when we’re fighting for dollars, it’s gotta be from the region. You can say ‘Look, there are this many people that need housing. and this is that we need help.’”
Each city will still chart its own future, but they will have support and won’t be acting alone.
“It’s not taking away authority from each of the cities to plan on their own—but looking at ‘are there some things we could do better if we did them together,” explained Berg.
The regional plan is county-wide but the City of San Luis Obispo will play a pivotal role.
“We’d love for people to be able to live where they work and we also know that not everyone’s going to live where they work,” said Mayor Stewart. “If we can help people have more affordable housing in all different parts of our county, then that’s going to be helpful in the long run.”
The group is currently in the process of gathering feedback from each city to fine-tune the plan moving forward.
Below is a list of upcoming meetings where the plan will be discussed:
-7/18/23: Both the Paso Robles and Pismo Beach City Council meetings
-7/24/23: Grover Beach City Council
-7/25/23: Arroyo Grande City Council
-8/2/23: SLOGCOG Board will consider adoption of regional housing plan
-8/8/23: SLO County Board of Supervisors will consider accepting the plan and submitting it to the state
